Windows 10 freezes randomly

I'm working on a project that uses laptops for data collection. Laptop is not connected to a network and always powered and set to never sleep or shutdown. Under Win 7 it worked fine. Under Win 10 we get freezes anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks and must power cycle laptop to recover. Some machines were Win 10 upgrades, some new with Win 10. We have tried many of the suggestions on this forum and others with no success. We have reverted one machine to Win 7 with success but cost and hassle. We tried Win 10 IOT with success but expensive and hassle. We bought one laptop with Win 10 and made only change to never sleep or shut down. That machine freezes. No applications turned on or installed. We have tried laptops from several vendors with the same results. We have checked event logs. Often last events were hours before the frozen desktop clock. Nothing is indicated that we can use. Does any of this give anyone a clue? Does anyone know how to approach diagnosing the problem as opposed to try this or try that?

jpmiller said:

I'm working on a project that uses laptops for data collection. Laptop is not connected to a network and always powered and set to never sleep or shutdown. Under Win 7 it worked fine. Under Win 10 we get freezes anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks and must power cycle laptop to recover. Some machines were Win 10 upgrades, some new with Win 10. We have tried many of the suggestions on this forum and others with no success. We have reverted one machine to Win 7 with success but cost and hassle. We tried Win 10 IOT with success but expensive and hassle. We bought one laptop with Win 10 and made only change to never sleep or shut down. That machine freezes. No applications turned on or installed. We have tried laptops from several vendors with the same results. We have checked event logs. Often last events were hours before the frozen desktop clock. Nothing is indicated that we can use. Does any of this give anyone a clue? Does anyone know how to approach diagnosing the problem as opposed to try this or try that?

Did you try disabling C-State in the BIOS?

I spent literally months tracking this down on my PC. I fixed a freezing issue on my Win 10 desktop by updating my Netgear USB wifi drivers. The freeze would happen randomly 2-3 times a week while I was working.

I realize that there are many possible causes for freezes or hard lockups, and by this freeze I am referring to a permanent one that requires a power off/reboot to resume. Symptoms: screen and mouse freezes, caps lock no longer functional on keyboard, etc. No black screen, or BSOD, no event logs either.

My first suspects were RAM or video drivers. Ran memtest86 thoroughly, swapped RAM anyway. No improvement.

Installed GPU and drivers from a different vendor. No improvement.

Disabled audio device. No improvement.

Removed security software and tested HDD's, ran sfc /scannow, everything else I could think of. No improvement.

Uninstalled my Netgear wifi and tried a cheap $10 USB wifi adapter. No more freezes!

Downloaded the latest version of Netgear drivers and installed that. All good again. No more freezes for several months now! It seems that the older version that I had been using was only certified for Windows 8. The updated version was Win 10 compatible.

zzzoom said:

I spent literally months tracking this down on my PC. I fixed a freezing issue on my Win 10 desktop by updating my Netgear USB wifi drivers. The freeze would happen randomly 2-3 times a week while I was working.

I realize that there are many possible causes for freezes or hard lockups, and by this freeze I am referring to a permanent one that requires a power off/reboot to resume. Symptoms: screen and mouse freezes, caps lock no longer functional on keyboard, etc. No black screen, or BSOD, no event logs either.

My first suspects were RAM or video drivers. Ran memtest86 thoroughly, swapped RAM anyway. No improvement.

Installed GPU and drivers from a different vendor. No improvement.

Disabled audio device. No improvement.

Removed security software and tested HDD's, ran sfc /scannow, everything else I could think of. No improvement.

Uninstalled my Netgear wifi and tried a cheap $10 USB wifi adapter. No more freezes!

Downloaded the latest version of Netgear drivers and installed that. All good again. No more freezes for several months now! It seems that the older version that I had been using was only certified for Windows 8. The updated version was Win 10 compatible.

So it could be a bad driver that causes freeze state or reboots? I was thinking that also but I am not sure. I disable my C state to prove also, so far so good.

I also switched my keyboard, mouse and audio device, because I think there was some kindo of problem with those drivers in Windows 10

Background:

I'm trying to fix a relative's computer. It is a ~6 year old, Dell 64-bit All-in-One with 4G RAM. Out of warranty. Came with Windows 7 but was upgraded to Windows 10. Being on a strict budget, it has been without any virus or malware protection for the last 2 years. It does not see heavy processing usage.

About a month or two ago it started having slowness troubles and lost the internet connection to Comcast/Xfinity. I made the hour long trip and managed to get SUPERAntiSpyware to to load and cleaned over 3500 malware threats. I brought home and ran MalwareBytes which found another 250-plus problems. I also found many, many useless programs. Even with all that cleaning and many other efforts, I could not get to the Internet. I decided to wipe and reload Windows 10.

Bingo! Internet. I updated and ran SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes. Cleaned more software out. Loaded AVAST! and Spybot (free programs). Accessed the Comcast/Xfinity email. Loaded Skype (a whole other story in continuing chapters), and Wordperfect 12 (all the software needed by the user). I also installed TeamViewer. After several days testing everything worked.

Another trip and delivered the computer. Within 1 week it started freezing up every 20 minutes. The cursor moves but nothing else opens or closes. We have waited 10 minutes for it to come back. Nothing. Skype worked for a week than stopped and made noises about Windows Live (see above).

Working from home, I've now disabled SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes from running all the time. Windows 10 reports all drivers are up-to-date. I tried to manually update some drivers but Windows 10 would not allow it. I checked for memory problems. I ran Disk Check and System File Checker. I disabled Windows Defender. I stopped almost everything that vaguely looked like it ran on a schedule. I've tried more things and have several times managed to go 60 or 90 minutes but it seems to revert to 20 minutes.

I did notice today that CPU and Memory usage was usually quite high. Tomorrow I'll try playing with Virtual Memory / Pagefile as posted here.

I'm open to literally anything someone will suggest.

Help!

First: Not a chrome problem. I did not load it and I can not find evidence of it.

Today I looked at Virtual Memory / Pagefile. I set the initial size at 6,144 MB and the maximum size at 18,432 MB.

It was good for about an hour than locked up. Rebooted and locked up at 20 minutes.

Anybody have any ideas?

Nothing posted worked on this desktop. The problem continued. My relative simply could not continue this way and authorized me to look for a replacement. I really wanted to go with Windows 8.1 for obvious reasons however I found a very good deal on Amazon for a laptop well withing the price range and with more hardware than they would need. Two day delivery. Load what little software needed and remove bloatware included by Dell and we were ready to go. Over a week now and no problems (yet).

For the record, my wife has been using Windows 10 for just over a year. She had to give up programs that worked for Windows 10 programs that sort of work. Every time MS does an update, I have to make adjustments to her software.

As for me, I tried Windows 10 just before she decided to take the plunge. For me it had too many problems, both software and hardware-wise. I went back to Windows 8.1.

Earlier this year I had to replace my laptop, I found one with Windows 7 and upgraded to Windows 8.1. Everything continues to work like a charm.

P.S. My relative's desktop in sitting in my den until I have time to play with it. --- I'm still watching these posts to see if someone preforms a miracle.

Ben